


Jorj

by Amemait



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Hand of Thrawn Duology - Timothy Zahn, Star Wars: Jedi Academy, Star Wars: Outbound Flight - Timothy Zahn, Star Wars: Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn
Genre: All of you are going to be annoyed with the name repetition, Angst, CLONES!, Compliant with Crosscurrent and Riptide by Paul S. Kemp, Deathfic, GFY, Grand Admiral Mitth'raw'nuruodo will end you, I'm Sorry, It's a love story, Jaden's backstory made a lot more sense once I had this Fridge Logic, M/M, Not the clones you're expecting though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-14 01:13:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2172345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amemait/pseuds/Amemait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From twenty-four to ninety-one.<br/>From one side of the galaxy to the other - across the stars a hundred times or more.<br/>From the name he was born to, to the name he died with.</p><p>He didn't remake the galaxy in his own image. He loved somebody who would have done it for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jorj

**Author's Note:**

> For [cruelest_month](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cruelest_month/pseuds/cruelest_month) who puts up with me.  
> For Kitti who literally put up with a phone call from me at half past eleven last night going 'IT'S DONE!'  
> For all those who follow me on Tumblr as Amemait and hang around despite the Star Wars I keep posting, and who have patted me on the head as I got stuck on this for weeks.

Jorj Car'das is 24, and regrets leaving Crustai with Doriana.

Most days it seems like he's under even closer scrutiny than he ever was with Thrawn's people.

Most days he just wants to go home, and it comes as a bit of a shock when he finally does. A short little visit back to Corellia, because he was about to lose all of his saved days off to the end of year rollover.

But he's not home; he realises this the instant he mutters something in cheunh in an art museum (why did he decide to go to an art museum, he's not got the eye for it that Ferasi had), and turns around to share this thought with Thrawn-

Who isn't there. Who's on the other side of the galaxy.

Jorj Car'das is 24, and just realised he felt more at home with his alien language student than he ever had on his own planet.

\--

Jorj Car'das is 26, and Chancellor Palpatine has a special job for him specifically, now that war is so close to breaking out.

He's been given a ship, which he's promptly christened the _Springhawk_ , and finished off christening the ship by getting rousingly drunk in his room and trying to draw a picture of a face, which just turns into an image of swirling blues. He never was any good at drawing, always much better at spatial reasoning than making art on a holoproj set for two dimensions.

He keeps it anyway.

When Doriana visits him, carrying a holoproj as though it's the most precious crystal, it's the only thing other than business the man's secretive other employer comments on.

The look that Doriana - Stratis, for the duration of this particular conversation - gives him, isn't worth the terrifying knowledge that Sidious has seen a part of his soul laid bare and understood its meaning.

\--

Jorj Car'das is 29, and has just drunk himself into a giggling, terrified stupor, right before throwing all his other alcohol away.

Once he had all the information, and really that wasn't so hard to gather now that he could work all sides of the war with impunity, it had all become too obvious.

Doriana was employed only by one man. Oh how Sidious must have laughed at them both - and he was definitely more the Sith Lord Darth Sidious than he was ever Chancellor Palpatine of Naboo.

Tomorrow, he has a list of things to do. Which bases to consolidate, which to abandon. How to keep his crews safe.

He's willing to be Palpatine's pet, to keep those under his care protected.

He thinks he'll settle his main base in Bpfassh to wait this out. Nothing should be happening there to do with the Clone Wars.

\--

Jorj Car'das is 30, and he wants to scream, but he can't move.

At least, not of his own volition.

\--

Jorj Car'das is 31, he thinks. Probably.

He's no idea how much time he's lost, but he does know that he was 30 before it happened, and he's been here a while. Odds are pretty good he's 31, even if the one thing he can't fix yet on Springhawk is her calendar, which keeps resetting itself to eight years ago. Otherwise, she's perfectly space worthy.

He thinks. Probably.

When he leaves he'll jump as far as she can take him before setting off his distress signal. He'd be more worried about the hyperdrive, but something tells him that'd will be all right. Besides, he's always had really good luck with those, at least.

Right now, however, he's 31 and helping Grand Master Yoda plant a food garden with the seeds he kept in the overdone survival kit he would never admit to anybody he always carried on his ships. It's a swamp planet here, but he's got a funny feeling that they'll grow just fine. Even the ones meant more for bright warm sunlight than this dark pervading damp.

At nights he dreams of Thrawn on a planet much like this. Mist-wreathed and leafy. He dreams they're sharing the same air, and he curls his heart around this thought.

He holds onto that thought whenever he has to pass more than twenty metres near the tree with the cave in its base.

He doesn't quite understand if what he feels towards that place is fear of the memory of what happened...

Or fear of the power so close he could almost consume it. Be consumed by it.

He won't know for another twenty years.

\--

Jorj Car'das is 32, and he's finally gotten a grainy holo of the alien that Captain Voss Parck brought back from the edges of Wild Space.

With blue skin, he'd assumed the 'genius alien' had to be one of the more militarily-inclined Pantorans.

It's not.

He's not touched a drop of alcohol in years, not since he figured it out about Sidious, but now the urge to drink is incredible.

\--

Jorj Car'das is nearly 33 when his ship gets boarded, and he demands to speak with the Captain. He has a safe travel order on file from Sidious himself, thanks to his years of service for the then-Chancellor, and the efforts he'd been putting in to root out those who would oppose the now-Emperor.

Sometimes in his work, he could almost feel Yoda's sad eyes upon him. He usually ignored this feeling, but sometimes it prompted him to do things that he would have otherwise...

Such as those rumours that General Kenobi was hiding out on Tattooine; that Alderaan's Caamasi settlement hid Jedi. He declared those all 'unfollowable'. 'Unlikely'. 'Laughable'.

But to get at his safe travel orders, he needed to speak to the Captain, because it simply wasn't safe for every low-level Imperial grunt he might come across to have access to his file.

He noticed the booted feet and the olive-gray uniform last of all. What he noticed far faster than that was the blue skin and glowing red eyes when he jumped up and held on.

\--

Jorj Car'das is 33 and wants to scream but Thrawn keeps kissing him.

Mostly he just moans every time Thrawn moves.

\--

Jorj Car'das is 35 when Thrawn gets his first secret promotion. They stay in. They always stay in; Coruscant - Imperial Centre, they're meant to call it - isn't overly friendly to nonhumans these days.

Thrawn shyly pulls out a ring and a bracelet. Chiss don't do rings, Car'das knows this, and the gesture is appreciated all the more for it. He says yes, and holds the alien close.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car'das is 37 when two things happen to change his current life.

Thrawn is posted far away from the bulk of his smuggling hubs and intelligence sources. Car'das follows, under the pretence of expanding the business.

This naturally upsets the Hutts.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car'das is 39 when he meets Talon Karrde, who thinks it's his new mission in life to get his boss laid.

Car'das starts wearing the ring a little pointedly and Karrde takes a split-second to notice it properly. Another month to believe it.

Car'das thinks the kid will go far.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car'das is 41 and he's had ten attempts on his life in the last month alone.

Thrawn wants him to leave the business, leave the life where he's so threatened, and come with him to the Unknown Regions.

Car'das thinks about it until his lifeday, and finally declines.

Thrawn accepts the decision.

Both of them regret this later.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car'das is nearly 43, and officially, the court scandal is enough to send Thrawn to the Unknown Regions, and demote Voss to go along with him.

Unofficially, well. Thrawn had asked Car'das along with him the year before for a reason.

He never imagined that somebody could see the Emperor smirk, and he'd rather felt like he needed a bath afterwards.

Fortunately his match was only too happy to oblige.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car'das is 45 and has just discovered that being Thrawn's match comes with the title he'd first heard used to introduce Thrass.

And what's more, he now knows there are a few species along the Outer Rim who know what it means.

The best lies have a grain of truth at their core, and he resolves to use Syndic whenever he needs a disguise that should have a title attached.

He always uses it when he's with Thrawn, as the Empire of the Hand carves its way through the Unknown Regions.

\--

Syndic Jorj Mittheo Car'das is 46 when his match gives him the _Lost Reef_. The unintentional bonus spoils of war from an adventure Thrawn had involving a sculpture and stolen information.

She's a beautiful ship, handles wonderfully, and Thrawn had her retrofitted. Full automated control - slave circuits, though Thrawn won't call them that without wincing. All run through a tiny elegant device from the days before the Clone Wars. Thrawn had found the device elsewhere, had kept it for the year stamped on the outside. The year they'd met.

Car'das knew his match was full of sentiment and a love of art, and this merely proved it.

Thrawn had etched something onto the control in flowing cheunh calligraphy, the script all the more breathtaking for the time it would have taken his match to write; Thrawn's handwriting has never been perfect.

From Mitth'raw'nuruodo to Mittheo'jorjcar'das.

The first time Car'das flies her solo is into battle against the Ssi Ruuvi Imperium.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car'das is 47 and has just heard that Boba Fett won't take a contract on him.

He has a sneaking suspicion that it's not just because of his own powers. Fett takes a lot of Outer Rim work and Imperial work, both of which lead back to Thrawn.

Still, that sort of reputation can only aid his endeavours.

He makes a note for his weekly holocall with Thrawn.

\--

Syndic Jorj Mittheo Car'das is nearly 49 and spending a month away from the business.

The Empire of the Hand is beautiful both from the inside and out; a spreading glow of light across the exact-scale holomap Thrawn keeps of both Empires.

It's a love note to the construction of order from chaos, and Thrawn has a wonderful habit of kissing him in a room lit only by those stars.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car’das is 50 the day he notices that his bracelet isn’t resting on his wrist in its usual spot, the tan lines from it visible on his arm and he wonders how long it’s been that way.

The ring hangs off his finger and suddenly feels heavy, and he doesn’t know why he’s got a strange feeling of foreboding. Usually he knows; usually he can pinpoint those feelings down to an individual about to do something against him.

This time it takes him a long time to realise that it’s himself.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car'das is 51 the day the Death Star explodes.

He feels a lot older. He can barely summon the energy to care when he hears about it.

He's dying, and his match is on the other side of the galaxy.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car’das is barely 53 the day he orders Yoda to heal him.

In retrospect, that was a mistake.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car'das is nearly 54, and he just saw his match alive and in person for the last time.

Though neither of them know it.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car'das is 56 when he attempts his first flow walk without attempting to control it, and it surprises him where it leads.

The Emperor dies, and spreads a ripple through the Force so dark and poisoned that he comes out of his meditation feeling unclean.

The next attempt ends just as poorly.

His screams echo through air his lungs were never evolved to fully function in.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car'das is 57 when he takes up sculpture.

He looks forward to showing them all to Thrawn one day.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car'das is 58 when he flow walks to see how Thrawn is, and inadvertently hits a burst of pure rage from his match.

He flow walks a great deal more after that, watching as his match looks after the child the Emperor had dared to order spliced together...

There are other children in the facility (and far too many ghosts of dead ones too), and Car'das knows his match ought to do better by each of them, but he can't bring himself to care for the same reason that Thrawn can't.

They've all got the Emperor in them. Sidious grew the children in his image, and the betrayal is all the more horrifying to Thrawn than to Car'das for that reason. Thrawn does replace the scientists, tries desperately to salvage what he can of the situation.

He knows it won't be enough, that without the kind of oversight that Thrawn can't afford to give them as he organises his return from the Empire of the Hand to the Empire he didn't build himself, but that he swore to defend... Those children will still be harmed. The Empire isn't known for keeping its genetic scientists in the light, and the ones Thrawn is reduced to using are from the Empire proper.

He can't take them all with him; hundreds of Force sensitive children born of the dark side... He doesn't dare risks his crews like that to their instability.

He takes one, only alive six months but grown to nearly five already. He takes the one whose presence broke what little faith he'd had left in the late Emperor as a person.

He takes the one Sidious had ordered created using Car'das as the other genetic donor.

Thrawn names the child Jaden Thrass Car'das. 'Jayden' was a Corellian artist's name, and Car'das appreciates that; it was the painting he'd given Thrawn on their first anniversary.

'Thrass', he understands that too.

The 'Car'das' makes him weep. Sidious in him or no, Thrawn accepted him as a son because the majority was Jorj's blood.

He hopes for only goodness and light for the child.

For once, he doesn't dare flow walk to find out.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car'das is nearly 61 when he watches his match die.

Thousands of light years away, no way to contact him, and not even able to go to Jaden to hold him and mourn the loss of a father and a match together, Jorj's grief is an almost physical thing.

Jorj Mittheo Car'das is 61 the night it finally happens, and his sobs reach far further than his screams years before ever had.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car'das is 62 when he picks up his sculpture work again.

He thinks he hears something that night.

He's not wrong.

Days and nights are filled with the Force, after all.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car'das is 64 when he physically leaves the Aing-Tii. They accept his leaving with the same calm expectation with which they accepted his arrival.

All things are easy to accept when you can perceive the Force the way they do.

The way Car'das does, now.

He finds Entoo Nee precisely where he expected to find the fussy human. It doesn't take long to win him over and employ him as a servant.

In fact, it takes him precisely as long as he expects it to.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car’das is 66 and thinks he might be going mad.

Still. The dreams are comforting. He knows he’s loved. And if this is a haunting it’s at least a polite one.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car’das is 68 when he watches over Jaden as he constructs a lightsaber.

He wonders where that part of his memories came from; Jorj has never constructed a lightsaber, though it’s certainly probable that Sidious had.

What follows is a year of stress and fear as his son becomes a Jedi.

A Knight within a single year. He can’t tell if he should be thrilled or horrified.

\--

Jorj Mittheo Car'das is nearly 72 the night he speaks with a droid in his own native tongue, the night he wakes because a young woman who's spent her life until this point being lied to, needs to make her choices.

He doesn't like the choice he gives, but he thinks he can sense Yoda's approval on the matter.

He wishes he could sense Thrawn's.

He stays up and he tells this droid many things, while all the time his heart is breaking and aching, part of his soul elsewhere.

With the clone of his match - a full clone this time, not the partial that Jaden is - as he dies without ever having breathed.

\--

Syndic Jorj Mittheo Car'das is 73 and he thinks he has come almost full circle.

Dean Jinzler is a sad and bitter old man, not much younger than he is. He seems a great deal younger though. And older. The anger at his core makes him older in body and more selfish in mind.

But here is his promise to Lorana Jinzler fulfilled, and here too is the promise he once made silently to his match as he slept.

Thrass will be found.

And of all people, it's Chaf'orm'bintrano he turns to for this. It's shocking to think that he was 13 when Jorj first met him, but in retrospect it makes a great deal of sense. Particularly considering what he knows of Chiss biology.

It wrenches at his heart, to be bowed to politely like this. To be spoken with by people who can say his full name, the one Thrawn had made sure he was able to use.

When he's invited to stay, he goes first to the Empire if the Hand.

There are things he must do.

\--

Syndic Mittheo'jorjcar'das is 74 by the time he returns to Chiss space again. The Empire of the Hand welcomed him easily, and he’d been grateful for that at the time, but being surrounded by Chiss faces and Chiss eyes and being able to sense the reasons behind their reactions (and their blank faces hid plenty of reactions; he’d been matched to Thrawn for years enough to read those)…

It had been wonderful. It had been terrible.

It had been a relief when Voss had spoken with him quietly about intelligence reports and analysis and all the other things that he’d once cared about so much more, and now he found he cared about them a great deal again.

The Far Outsiders Thrawn dreaded still approached, and there is work still to be done to prepare.

People will live through this, he swears it.

But it will be far more difficult than he could have imagined.

\--

Syndic Mittheo'jorjcar'das doesn't want to think at all about how long the war was. About how many lives were lost.

About how many lives he failed to save.

What he tries to think about was the way that he could have sworn he had Thrawn at his side while he collated information and coordinated with Formbi and the Empire of the Hand and the Empire, the New Republic, the Galactic Alliance and the horrifying moments when he could feel through the Force as the galaxy held its breath-

And the way Thrawn took Jorj's hand in his, and kissed his forehead, and whispered in his ear.

 _Not yet, my warm light_.

\--

Syndic Mittheo’jorjcar’das is… older than he likes to think about, and grateful for Formbi and Soontir’s combined silence on the matter of his existence.

Part of him feels perhaps he should be shocked about surviving that war, and yet he knew he would.

Part of him wishes he’d known about all the reasons for Thrawn’s interest in Killik Twilight before all this mess started. Even after his match has been dead and gone for far too many years, the man was still surprising him.

He’s perhaps more grateful when he walks down the paths the future takes, and realises what Jacen Solo never had any chance at being other than, from the moment he was captured in the last war.

Or possibly sooner. From the day he decided to ponder his own place in the universe, and his use of the Force.

He wishes he could speak with his little Jaden (an adult and knighted too soon too young, but he’d always been bright), but he knows that doing that would make all their paths worse.

Colonel Solo would have used the information of his existence for so much more darkness than he might commit on his own, and Mittheo’jorjcar’das will not let that much be on his conscience for a few selfish stolen moments with his son.

\--

Syndic Mittheo’jorjcar’das has made his final, proper goodbyes to the Aing-Tii. They warned him that this might happen.

He could live like Yoda; centuries more, if he doesn’t choose to burn himself up from the inside-out with too much Force-use.

He knows what he’s going to do. He’s seen what he’s going to do. He’s made his peace with this.

His reasons are more selfish than Yoda’s were, and he accepts this.

The Aing-Tii don’t prevent him from leaving.

\--

Syndic Mittheo’jorjcar’das turns 91 the day his clone dies.

He holds onto him, the son Thrawn had never expected but had loved all the same, the son he himself never met. He grasps onto Jaden Thrass Car’das – Jaden Korr, he goes by, with no knowledge of what he meant to his fathers – with the brightest rainbow of the Force that he can touch.

The effort of aiding the personality transference from one body to another, clones sharing a genetic base though they are, is exhausting. Harder still to help Jaden cling to his connection to the Force. Thrawn’s son is Jedi in every way that it’s important to be, and to cut off the Force would be to cut out his heart and soul.

Car'das could not bear to see his son suffer like that just so that he himself could live longer and still never meet with him.

The Force beckons as his own energy fades. Car'das can almost see Thrawn’s hand reaching out for him, helping him up to walk away one last time.

 _Jorj_.

And this time, at last, he goes.


End file.
